


till my breath runs out;

by Rosse



Category: Naruto
Genre: 3am stuff, Character Death, Disturbing Content, Gen, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 13:52:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1472203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosse/pseuds/Rosse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He laughs and says "our little serpent boy" and she suggests "Orochimaru" because why the fuck not, she explains, he looks like one, with those bruises elongating and ghosting at the bridge of his nose."</p>
            </blockquote>





	till my breath runs out;

She has deep purple hair she wears to her lower back and tied back in plaits. He has shorn black fuzz and skin too pale for Konoha's warm weather. She doesn't smile; spends too much time with her head buried in books, learning languages and code with a natural awareness of how to best absorb all the grammar and vocabulary. He smiles too easily; works as a cloth merchant who finally decides to settle down in the land of fire and leaves. He has a knifeblade grin and something hidden behind too-dark eyes that she needs to know. 

Something she needs to decode before anyone else does.

They fall in love in the same way they meet - crashing into one another with force and fingers splaying against cloth and skin, unable to control themselves. She plucks out her desired secrets and he inhales her like she's smoke; savours the quickness of her mind and her sharp tongue. She never tells him anything and he cannot help but pick and scratch at her layers as if he can physically peel them away as easily as she can unravel his tongues and codes.

She decides that they follow the traditional path of any other couple - of course, she decides everything in reality - and they marry, find a home, have a child. He looks like both of them: his skin, her shining gold eyes and those bruise purple markings around his eyes that result in several calls to child services by strangers during his infancy. They don't decide on a name until he's 6 months old and a snake slithers into his cot and wraps itself around the boy in some odd protective measure.

He laughs and says "our little serpent boy" and she suggests "Orochimaru" because why the fuck not, she explains, he looks like one, with those bruises elongating and ghosting at the bridge of his nose. He agrees because she makes all the decisions and because his imagination lacks as much as hers does. She reads to him in all the languages she knows and his first word is some obscure term from Kumo that - she later explains - means "information" in their oldest recorded cipher.

He teaches his son how to throw kunai and shuriken while he drags the boy on business trips and she doesn't mind because she knows he never really travelled as a cloth merchant anyway. She fills his head with dead languages and code and all the details of jutsu formulation - chakra, hand seals and all the other things that he supposes are important, but ultimately rather dull in comparison to assassination and battle. They discuss his education in code and by the time he's in the academy, he turns a flat gaze on both of them and comments, "I broke that code last year," like he's commenting on the weather.

She tells him, over a late night wine, that Orochimaru will be taking the graduation exam next week and he just raises a brow and runs his hand over his black fuzz and looks to the ceiling of their living room before asking whether he should ask the Hokage to let him join Konoha's ranks if he's going to be the only person in this family without a hitae-ate.

She agrees to train him for ranking exams, if he wants, and it's the first decision he's ever made in their relationship.

When his son turns up a week later, clutching the symbol of Konoha's shinobi ranks in his hand and his eyes glittering with ambition and promise, he watches through dying eyes with his guts on the floor and his wife's blood trickling against his fuzz. She coughs and swears in some Kusagakure tongue he'd never quite gathered the logic in because why are they dying now, you are such a bastard, you know.

Orochimaru pretends he doesn't understand his mother's words and he gets halfway through an "I'm sorry. My idea. Just sparr--"

The last lesson anyone needs to know, he thinks as his vision blurs, is that death is random and never makes sense.

**Author's Note:**

> I could pretend I knew anything of where this came from or why, but I don't, so I won't.


End file.
